The first thing you noticed, upon entering the clubhouse of the Chicago White Sox in Glendale, Arizona, this spring training, was the jersey hanging in the corner stall. It looked just like all the others and was given the same prominence, but it was much smaller. Its owner, Drake LaRoche, No. 25, is only 14 years old. His father, Adam, was the White Sox’s designated hitter.
LaRoche, who is 36 and has played 12 seasons in the majors, announced his retirement on Friday with a letter he posted on Twitter. LaRoche said that Kenny Williams, the team’s executive vice president, had first told him to significantly scale back his son’s time in the clubhouse. Later, LaRoche said, he was told not to bring Drake to the ballpark at all.
“Obviously, I expressed my displeasure toward this decision to alter the agreement we had reached before I signed with the White Sox,” LaRoche wrote. “Upon doing so, I had to make a decision. Do I choose my teammates and my career? Or do I choose my family?”
To LaRoche, the decision was easy.
“Of one thing I am certain: we will regret NOT spending enough time with our kids, not the other way around,” he wrote, adding later, “This was likely to be the last year of my career, and there’s no way I was going to spend it without my son.”
LaRoche, whose son is home schooled, wrote that he was grateful that the White Sox and his previous team, the Washington Nationals, had allowed him to spend so much time with Drake at the ballpark. He blamed Williams alone for the decision to alter what he said was their arrangement.
Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox owner, said in a statement that he had instructed members of the organization not to comment on the LaRoche matter. Reinsdorf said he would speak with the team’s players and staff members, a group that almost certainly will include Chris Sale, the star pitcher who spoke with reporters in Glendale on Friday.
Sale displayed Drake LaRoche’s signed jersey in his locker on Friday. Manager Robin Ventura told reporters that Drake was more mature than most of the players, and there was no indication that players had complained about him.
“We had some positive energy going,” Sale told reporters. “There was absolutely no problem in here whatsoever with anyone, and he” — meaning Williams — “created a problem.”
Sale said that Williams should not police the clubhouse, and added that Williams had shifted blame for the LaRoche decision from the players to the coaches to the owner, leaving the team puzzled and angry.
“We got boldfaced lied to by someone we’re supposed to be able trust,” Sale said. “You can’t come tell the players it was the coaches and tell the coaches it’s the players and then come in and say something completely different. If we’re all here to win a championship, this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”
In a statement, Williams said, “While I disagree with Chris’ assertions today, I certainly have always appreciated his passion.”
In the context of the game on the field, losing LaRoche — who batted just .207 last season and was due to make $13 million — might matter less than the potential impact on Sale’s future. The White Sox have tried to build around Sale, whose five-year, $32.5 million contract has club options that could keep him in Chicago through 2019. Alienating such an essential player, who
is already severely underpaid relative to his peers, could have a negative impact on a team seeking to recover from a last-place finish in 2015.
There is also the matter of LaRoche’s salary, and whether the White Sox are refusing to honor a provision in his contract. Adam Eaton, the team’s union representative, said he had spoken to the union about the possibility of a grievance. A spokesman for the players’ association said the union was monitoring the situation.
In the larger context, of course, the link between fathers and sons is part of the fabric of the game. Dwier Brown, the actor who played Kevin Costner’s father in “Field of Dreams” in 1989, still makes appearances at minor league parks, signing autographs and playing catch with fans.
“The father-son relationship can be fairly awkward,” Brown said Friday in a telephone interview, describing the tensions that can arise during teenage years. “It’s very hard for fathers to put it all into words, and baseball becomes a place where you can have a conversation without words. Throwing a ball back and forth is as much a conversation as anything. I give to you, I get from you.”
Brown, who wrote a memoir, “If You Build It...,” in 2014, said he often receives emails from people just wanting to share stories of a baseball connection with their father. The game, he said, lends itself to such bonding.
“Most other sports don’t have that opportunity for contemplation and time,” he said. “When you’re sitting at a ballpark with your dad, you have time to talk. It’s not like a Raiders game.”
Baseball is tradition in the La Roche family. Adam’s brother, Andy, and his father, Dave, also played in the major leagues. It is not at all uncommon for players to bring their sons to the clubhouse, especially for a veteran player with stature in the game and a son who is a young teenager.
Several New York Yankees have had their sons around the team in recent years. So has manager Joe Girardi, who said it was “extremely important” for fathers to be active in their children’s lives.
“The big thing to me is guys have to be ready to do the work and be ready to play the game,” Girardi told reporters at Yankees camp on Friday. “Before that, their time is theirs. If they want their kids out here, I’m OK with that.”
It is part of baseball lore. Prince Fielder would routinely belt home runs in batting practice late in his father Cecil’s career. Some sons of the players on the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati, including the Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., went on to play in the majors. Who could forget J.T. Snow scooping up little Darren Baker, son of Dusty Baker, then the manager of the San Francisco Giants, before an onrushing base runner in the 2002 World Series?
That was adorable — but dangerous — and baseball soon established 14 years old as the minimum age for bat boys. Drake LaRoche is 14, but he will no longer be part of the White Sox. Neither will his father, who sounded at peace with his choice.
“In life, we’re all faced with difficult decisions and will have a choice to make,” Adam LaRoche wrote, concluding his farewell note. “Do we act based on the consequences, or do we act on what we know and believe in our hearts to be right? I choose the latter.”
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